Page 190 - a-columbia-county-boys-recollections-and-memories-of-columbia-county-florida-(2012)-lenvil-h-dicks

A Columbia County Boy's Recollections and Memories of Columbia County Florida (2012) Lenvil H. Dicks

WAITING 80 YEARS FOR A BIRTHDAY PARTY

When my brothers and sisters and I were growing up, nobody seemed to pay much attention to
birthdays. 1 do not know of any one of the eight of the John and Pearl Dicks’ children that ever had a
birthday party. If somebody was honored with a birthday party, 1 never knew it.

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However, and after a lifetime of waiting, I had my first birthday party. It was to honor me on my 80
birthday and was a very, very flattering experience. It was held at the large Lake Butler Civic Center, on
Saturday night before my actual birthday on the following Wednesday.

What happened was that some of my former students from the Lake Butler High School band, which I
had resigned from 52 years previous, and they decided that they wanted to have a birthday banquet in
my honor, and it was a very gala affair, and I enjoyed it immensely, and felt tremendously honored that
after 52 years that they would still want to recognize my birthday.

Since Union High School in Lake Butler was quite a small school in those days, probably the largest
band that I had in the four years I was there would have consisted of no more than 40 players, and of
course many, many of them would be a member of the band for more than one year certainly, and
sometimes for several years. I do not know actually how many separate individuals were in the Lake
Butler Band during the time I was there, but I doubt that it would have exceeded a number of 100.

The night that they gave me the birthday party, I would bet that there were at least 80 of that 100 present
that night, most of whom I had not seen for 52 to 56 years, depending on what year any particular
individual may have graduated. It gave me an extremely warm feeling to see all of those former students
turn out to honor me after all those years, and many many of them, (in fact most of them,) I had not seen
in over 50 years. When I left them they were still children, and the night of the birthday party they were
of sufficient age that most of them were already drawing social security.

There just has to be some kind of a first involved here, especially since I had been gone from that school
for so many, many years and had been totally out of touch and out of sight. I think that the person who
probably ram-rotted that get-together was Mary Etta Minshew Hawthorn, as Mary Etta was a drummer
in my band and also an exceptional pianist. When we had students that would enter a solo competition at
the District or State Band Contest, Mary Etta would usually play the piano accompaniments with the
solo, and she was sort of the leader in the band, and as it turned out, she still is.

I owe that group a big, big thanks for what they did for me and hope some of them will read this book
and realize that I really appreciated it, and I still do.

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